Requirements have developed in many industries to devise techniques for tracing the history of a product through the course of a multi-stage production process. Where this production involves rigorous materials treatment or is one which is carried out within a harsh industrial environment, the development of effective traceable marking techniques becomes an elusive task.
One such vigorous production environment is encountered in the steel and other metals industry where the materials generated find their genesis in a given batch number or melt of scientifically orchestrated alloying components. From the point in production where such a melt becomes a solid entity, it is desired that the originating melt identification be maintained. Such points in production vary widely within the industry. For example, metal solidification may be evolved from a continuous casting process or as discrete ingots. Where the ingots are formed, a next process procedure may be to develop a bloom which, in turn, may be used as or converted into a billet. Ultimately, the starting material becomes an end product such as a length of pipe or the like.
The provision of a traceable marking upon the solidified materials as they exist within all stages of their production has not been effectively achieved with conventional devices and techniques. For example, paint markings or the like are unacceptable inasmuch as they will be expunged in the course of the production process. Such markings also may be lost as raw materials are stored in the open and undergo rust and corrosion. Very often, the metal materials will be treated by grinding or the like such that many forms of marking would be removed. Additionally, the rigorous environment involved in many processes calls for a remote human attendance to the procedure of marking. Thus, some remote form of attendance should be made available. Because a large number of different products and starting materials may be involved in any production facility, a traceable marking system suited therefor should have a message flexibility to provide adequate identification of each individual element. Further, it very often is desirable to serialize the markings positioned upon individual components of a given production run. It has been observed that certain end product user entities, for example, in the petroleum production industries, now require that a production traceable coding having a long term permanence be incorporated within products. With such coding, in the event of failure after a long period of use, the manufacturing parameters then can be traced and evaluated.
For the most part, a required permanence of the marking can be achieved through some form of stamping technique. However, the development of a required flexibility in message selection has not been available in industry. Stamping approaches have, for example, utilized dies which carry a collection of full form characters sometimes referred to as "full faced dies". These characters may be positioned in a wheel or in a ball form of die carrier which is manipulated to define a necessarily short message and is dynamically struck into the material to be marked. As is apparent, the necessarily complex materials involved are prone to failure and the full faced dies exhibit rapid wear characteristics. Because of the necessary size of the resultant marking mechanism, the message length becomes limited to an overly restricted and somewhat impractical extent.